Cal Newport talks with Ed Zitron to judge if 2025 was a good or bad year for AI in episode 386 of the Deep Questions podcast. Buy Cal Newport's latest book, “Slow Productivity” at www.calnewport.com/slow 2025 was a year that was saturated in AI news, from Deep Seek, through claims of economic “blood baths,” to to GPT-5, Sora, and Chatbot girlfriends. Frankly, it was exhausting. As we now look back on 2025 an interesting question arises: all in all, did this end up being a good or bad year for AI? To help me answer this question, I’m joined by hard-hitting AI commentator Ed Zitron, who's been everywhere in the media in recent months helping to make sense of the wild claims being thrown in the general public’s direction. Together we go through the biggest AI stories of the year to try to make sense of what just happened. Download my FREE Deep Life Guide HERE: https://bit.ly/3QBIcug Listen to Episode Here: https://www.thedeeplife.com/listen/ Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/3U3sTvo Links: Get a signed copy of Cal’s “Slow Productivity” at https://peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/ Cal’s monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv5976z9po http://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/davos-2025-ai-agents https://blog.google/technology/google-deepmind/gemini-model-updates-february-2025/ https://openai.com/index/sora/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/ https://ai-2027.com/ https://fortune.com/2025/05/28/anthropic-ceo-warning-ai-job-loss/ https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/08/07/chat-gpt-5-release-date-open-ai/85566627007/#:~:text=GPT%2D5%20release%20date,release%20date%20for%20Part%202 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/what-if-ai-doesnt-get-much-better-than-this https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-bubble-building-spree-55ee6128 https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/openai-and-nvidia-announce-strategic-partnership-to-deploy-10gw-of-nvidia-systems https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/technology/openai-sora-video-app.html https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-5 https://www.ft.com/content/064bbca0-1cb2-45ab-85f4-25fdfc318d89 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEmjygNK0 Thanks to our Sponsors: This episode is sponsored by Better Help: https://www.betterhelp.com/deepquestions https://www.reclaim.ai/cal https://www.expressvpn.com/deep https://www.calderalab.com/deep 0:00 Cal talks about AI 3:03 Interview with Ed Zitron 1:58:05 Cal Reacts to Comments Connect with Cal Newport: 🔴Visit Cal's BLOG and website: https://calnewport.com/blog/ 🔴Check out Cal's books: https://calnewport.com/writing/ 🔴Check out The Deep Life: https://thedeeplife.com About Cal Newport: Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In addition to his academic research, he writes about the intersection of digital technology and culture. Cal's particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives. Cal is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including, most recently, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. He's also the creator of The Time-Block Planner. The videos are considered to be used under the "Fair Use Doctrine" of United States Copyright Law, Title 17 U.S. Code Sections 107-118. Videos are used for editorial and educational purposes only and I do not claim ownership of any original video content. I don't use said video clips in advertisements, marketing or for direct financial gain. All video content in each clip is considered owned by the individual broadcast companies. #CalNewport #DeepWork #DeepLife #DeepQuestions #TimeblockPlanner #WorldWithoutEmail #DeepQuestionsPodcast